When Fear Creeps In – Sunday Thought For The Day

THE FOLLOWING WAS WRITTEN FOR 11/25/12 OUR DAILY BREAD BY: Jennifer Benson Schuldt:

When my daughter exclaimed, “Mommy, a bug!” I looked where she was pointing and saw the largest spider I have ever encountered outside of a pet shop. Both the spider and I knew that he would not be allowed to stay in our house. And yet, as I faced him, I found I could not take one step closer to end the standoff. My pulse quickened. I swallowed and gave myself a pep-talk. Still, fear kept me frozen in place.

Fear is powerful; it can override logical thinking and produce irrational behavior. Thankfully, Christians don’t have to let fear of anything—people, situations, or even spiders—rule our actions. We can declare, “Whenever I am afraid, I will trust in [God]” (Ps. 56:3).

Taking this stand against fear is consistent with the Bible’s instruction to “trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding” (Prov. 3:5). Our own understanding may lead us to overestimate the object of our fear and underestimate God’s power. When we are afraid, we can depend on God’s understanding (Isa. 40:28) and trust in His love for us that “casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). The next time fear creeps into your life, don’t panic. God can be trusted in the darkness.

Into His hands I lay the fears that haunt me,
The dread of future ills that may befall;
Into His hands I lay the doubts that taunt me,
And rest securely, trusting Him for all. —Christiansen

9 When I cry unto thee, then shall mine enemies turn back: this I know; for God is for me.

10 In God will I praise his word: in the Lord will I praise his word.

11 In God have I put my trust: I will not be afraid what man can do unto me.

12 Thy vows are upon me, O God: I will render praises unto thee.

13 For thou hast delivered my soul from death: wilt not thou deliver my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living?

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About Mychal Massie

Mychal S. Massie is an ordained minister who spent 13 years in full-time Christian Ministry. He was founder and president of the non-profit “In His Name Ministries.” He is the former National Chairman of the conservative black think tank, Project 21-The National Leadership Network of Black Conservatives and a former member of its parent think tank, the National Center for Public Policy Research. Read the entire Bio here

4 Responses to When Fear Creeps In – Sunday Thought For The Day

Speaking of fear and our national identity wondering what is need today here is my take.
Can you imagine the thoughts and anticipation in the hearts of those first pilgrims as they began their voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to a new land they had never seen? They were leaving behind their homeland with friends, family, and familiarity, for a hostile unknown, untamed, and uncertain future. What brave souls they were. What great hope they held in their hearts. Fear was not an obstacle to their desire to partake of a new life in a new world.
The brave souls who left all behind in Eastern Europe to come to a new land known as America were seeking not merely opportunity but freedom, freedom from oppressive rule and taxation of kings and queens. As all men of all ages they lived and died being bound by two things, the rule of laws set by those with power over them and their hope and trust in their God. They came from Spain, France, Portugal, England, and Ireland settling everywhere along our east and southern shores and eventually the coast of California. Understand this for certain, their former masters may have been of a variety but their God was one in the same.
After arriving in their new land these hardy souls seeking freedom and opportunity in gratitude to their God with hope in their future made it obvious by naming their settlements “New” this and that or giving it the name of a favorite Saint. Their first common structure was not a town hall but a Church to worship and offer thanks to their God. Who was that God? It was not Allah, or Buddha, or any thing else. Regardless of the denomination the one thing essential in all the churches was the Bible. America from the very beginning was a nation of believers in Jesus Christ and the God of Abraham. It has always been a Judeo-Christian nation. Another thing to be certain of is that when these people of God came together to declare their unity and independence from all their former masters they were guided by their common faith to declare all men were created equal by their creator God and as such had inalienable rights such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This Christian conscience is what enabled our forefathers whose ancestors had lived centuries fighting each other at the command of power hungry rulers who enslaved those they conquered to eventually end the slavery of fellow Americans who had been brought here from Africa and forced to serve on plantations and as house servants. In retrospect those immigrants, God bless them, were exposed during their captivity to Christianity and became vivid examples for all of us of endurance and faithfulness in the face of persecution.
The truth of all of this had been accepted for over two hundred years until our current president from nowhere soon after his first election declared to the world that we were no longer a Christian nation.

That boastful announcement was not a statement of fact it was a wishful personal belief. It also was an indication of the design of his personal agenda to transform America into a nation without a valid constitution constructed by men of faith whose coin and currency bore the inscription “In God We Trust”, and a nation unrestrained by Biblical integrity or a devout Christian conscience. Why would the leader of this beloved land of ours be so bold as to declare the demise of our heritage and its conscience and integrity? Was he remorsefully announcing our loss or proudly proclaiming the beginning of a new era he was about to impose upon us?
There is little doubt after decades of progressive liberal indoctrination throughout our universities, public schools and the mainstream media our society had gradually eroded its moral standards by capitulating to the onslaunt of anti-Christian rhetoric deceitfully presented as benevolent social justice. Evil is as Evil does and where better to start a last ditch effort by its Legions to corrupt the worlds most powerful Christian nation than within its own government. We can not deny its presence in the agenda of politicians, many who profess to be Christians, in the hollowed halls in Washington along with socially corrupt governorships and big city mayors all over the country driving us to bankruptcy with endless entitlement programs and dividing the people into secular camps of perverse but (now) legal behavior railing against the founding values of our nation mocking the Church and her moral teaching under the guise of social justice or benevolent equal benefits and rights.
Our country has lost a cherished pride in our deep religious faith based on Judeo-Christian values as woven into the fabric of our society. In a single lifetime (mine for instance) we have abandoned things like Blue Laws to protect the sanctity of the Sabbath and two parent church on Sunday families with stay at home mothers and embraced 24/7 shopping to satisfy a mounting hunger for every imaginable comfort and personal desire and become complacent with not only single moms and gay marriage but government subsidized abortion clinics for mothers wishing to kill their unborn paid for by a government run healthcare system which forces under specific penalties private companies and religious institutions to cooperate financially in this Holocaust of our Silent Citizens and even against their deeply held religious principles to actually perform the butchery as an act of social necessity.
Our most urgent need today is not to avoid an economic collapse or the financial cliff but rather we need to ignite and initiate a spiritual revival and search our souls admitting to ourselves we have turned from and left behind the only salvation we really have, the Lord Jesus Christ and his Divine Mercy.
God Bless Mychal and his work.

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